A lot of what you are discussing has to do with the word "theory". A theory is something that has never been conclusively disproven. Both evolution and global warming are theories. The nature of many theories is that they are speculative and cannot be conclusively disproven, as we do not the understanding to do and it may not be possible for us to gain that understanding. You can, therefore, have multiple theories to explain one phenomenom.
So in this case, is man made global warming a good theory? Yes. Do we have the necessary understanding and evidence to disprove all alternate theories? No.
This is the process of science. There is no such thing as a consensus of views in science. There are theories.
So are you taking the same "wait and see" approach with gravity?
So are you taking the same "wait and see" approach with gravity?
Not even close.
The approach is act constructively to find actual solutions to fossil fuel dependency, and the sooner the better. Don't exploit global warming theory to gain political and economic advantages.
The approach is act constructively to find actual solutions to fossil fuel dependency, and the sooner the better. Don't exploit global warming theory to gain political and economic advantages.
The approach is act constructively to find actual solutions to fossil fuel dependency, and the sooner the better. Don't exploit global warming theory to gain political and economic advantages.
No, I meant your approach to accepting man-made climate change science as a very strong and likely cause of global warming.
Thing is we don't have time. You may think I'm some Cassandra but almost every reputable agency working on this issue has made increasingly alarming statements in the past 3 years about just how close to the cliff we are. Navel gazing to supporting multiple theories as you suggest is just another tired tactic of confusing the issue to try to do nothing about it.
Sure, there's a vanishingly small percentage that we may all be wrong, but there's a huge probably that this is real and not only that, the impacts are dire.
You can choose to sit there at your computer and just deny that to yourself as a way to make it feel better. But that's not sound. If we actually look into anticipated impacts of climate change we see significant strain to the basic ecological mechanisms that support human civilization. Don't you even remotely think that it might be prudent to do something about it? How can you seriously rationalize to yourself that this is an issue that we need not be worried about?
The probability that a changing climate will negatively impact you and especially any children you may have is higher than your house catching fire, but I assume you own fire insurance? So why the logical disconnect?
Tinordi, I honestly enjoy your diatribes on climate change, but what do you suggest that the average Canadian citizen do to stop it? The livelihood of many Albertans relies on an industry that is destroying the earth.
Scientists and activists can bang the "we needed to fix it decades ago" drum and I'm interested to know what technology they've come up with. The real kicker is that it's these very oil companies putting ideas into motion, such as carbon capture.
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Tinordi, I honestly enjoy your diatribes on climate change, but what do you suggest that the average Canadian citizen do to stop it?
Accept that it's happening, regardless of how uncomfortable that might be.
Make it a voting issue.
Make it an economics issue.
Understand that this is a base economic issue if you need to. Understand that it's a basic human evolutionary issue if you need to. Understand and accept that it is actually an issue and that the longer we carry on suspending scientific inquiry because it is uncomfortable for 'the economy', the worse we will be in the long run when the tide eventually washes over our heads stuck in the sand.
A lot of what you are discussing has to do with the word "theory". A theory is something that has never been conclusively disproven.
More than that, a theory is an explanation that has been supported repeatedly by observation and experimentation, and has predictive and explanatory force.
Only not being disproven would be a hypothesis.
A scientific theory is the apex of scientific understanding.
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Originally Posted by blankall
Both evolution and global warming are theories. The nature of many theories is that they are speculative and cannot be conclusively disproven, as we do not the understanding to do and it may not be possible for us to gain that understanding. You can, therefore, have multiple theories to explain one phenomenom.
Theories aren't "speculative", they're robust, confirmed, and have predictive and explanatory power. If an idea doesn't have that, then it isn't a theory, it's a hypothesis. If a theory or a hypothesis cannot in principle be disproven, then for the most part it wouldn't be considered scientific (though not always). Neither evolution nor AGW are theories that fall under this inability to be conclusively disproven criteria though, both could easily be disproven with the right observations.
General relativity is a theory of gravity, a theory that has as of yet not been disproven. I don't see many other compelling theories of gravity. There are other hypotheses to try and explain some observations with gravity rather than with other things (dark matter, dark energy), but none come close to having the level of confirmation and explanatory power that general relativity does.
Similarly, AGW best explains the current observations with respect to climate, no other theory does.
Quote:
Originally Posted by blankall
So in this case, is man made global warming a good theory? Yes. Do we have the necessary understanding and evidence to disprove all alternate theories? No.
You don't need to disprove all the alternate theories (or hypotheses in this case, there are no alternate ideas to explain the observations that would approach the level of a scientific theory), if the alternate theories do not even match AGW for explanatory and predictive power, then they discount themselves, they need to be improved upon and will be considered when they can match AGW.
That's how any new theory supplants a prevailing one; it does a better job than the prevailing one. General relativity did a better job than Newton at explaining all the observable phenomenon, so that became the consensus view. The big bang theory replaced other cosmological theories because it did a better job of explaining and predicting.
Quote:
Originally Posted by blankall
This is the process of science. There is no such thing as a consensus of views in science. There are theories.
The consensus is what theory is best at explaining. There are alternate theories of evolution, but no one is going to try and use Lamarckian evolution as a basis to make decisions.. or rather someone did, with Lysenko sending scientists who supported natural selection to the gulags or death and basing a nation's science on ideology rather than the prevailing theory, basically obliterating any biological science for almost half a century.
Consensus isn't part of the scientific method true, but it certainly can be informed by it, and it still is a meaningful piece of information. All scientists agreeing on something doesn't make that thing more correct, why all the scientists agree does.
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Originally Posted by blankall
We should be doing our best to come up with alternative energy sources and reducing oil/gas use as much as possible regardless of global warming theories.
I think Global Warming/Climate Change is firmly a voting and economics issue and has been for some time. I wonder if that's been part of the reason that more hasn't been done to combat it. I often wonder if we'd be having a totally different conversation right now, akin to the Ozone Layer, if Al Gore wasn't the point man for the conversation almost a decade ago.
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My problem with climate change politices is the solution is to cut GHG emissions. The problem is that if you look at the models we are done, screwed. Preventing global warming of 2 deg C or more and allowing all people to emit the same amount of C02 requires something like a 95% reduction in our current C02 emissions.
This is NOT POSSIBLE.
So I think we need to focus on a technologically based solution of reversing climate change not just cutting emissions. Yet the geo-engineering solution also is looked down upon by the Environmental groups. No one is going to give up there ipads 42" TV's and cars. We have no way of making these efficient enough to keep them and by the time we build all of this new power generation, retrofit all of our homes and do everything else required to cut 95% of our C02 use it will be too late.
If you believe the science and the models the game is over.
My problem with climate change politices is the solution is to cut GHG emissions. The problem is that if you look at the models we are done, screwed. Preventing global warming of 2 deg C or more and allowing all people to emit the same amount of C02 requires something like a 95% reduction in our current C02 emissions.
This is NOT POSSIBLE.
So I think we need to focus on a technologically based solution of reversing climate change not just cutting emissions. Yet the geo-engineering solution also is looked down upon by the Environmental groups. No one is going to give up there ipads 42" TV's and cars. We have no way of making these efficient enough to keep them and by the time we build all of this new power generation, retrofit all of our homes and do everything else required to cut 95% of our C02 use it will be too late.
If you believe the science and the models the game is over.
It's actually not at all. This is a completely uneducated opinion.
All of the technologies to make a 60-80% reduction in GHGs exist today. Those technologies aren't cost competitive yet with fossil fuels so that's why people like myself are strong advocates of making fossil fuels more expensive through a carbon price to make renewable, low carbon, energy efficient options available.
Further, this isn't just a techno-fix solution. Much of what we can do is just changing the physical shape of our communities. Twenty percent of Canada's emissions are from transportation, which begs teh question of why are we travelling around so much? Well because we've built automobile dependent communities, but we don't need to continue to build those. Alot of cities, even Calgary is taking hard looks at density and making walking/biking very attractive as alternatives to vehicles.
So I vigorously disagree that we can do nothing about it. That's just utterly untrue, no two ways about it. Don't believe me? There's literally hundreds of papers that model improvements to our energy-economic system and their impacts. I would start with the National Roundtable on the Environment and Economy (the institute that the Harper government destroyed last year because they didn't like it's policy recommendations).
Ultimately what you can do is one thing: vote. We need to start rewarding politicians that are serious about doing something on climate change and punishing politicians who don't.
This Conservative government is about as bad as it gets. And we sit here in Calgary saying well they're defending the oil industry and the oil industry is essential to our well being. I would counter that to say are they really? In case you haven't noticed major infrastructure projects are on hold due to climate change concerns. More and more punitive policies on the oil sands from other jurisdictions are coming down the pipe. The EU has the fuel quality directive, the US is increasingly concerned with oil sands imports, BC even has a low carbon fuel standard and is wrapped up in denying Northern Gateway. Much of this is a direct result of the LACK of domestic policy to reduce GHGs here in Canada.
So the government's and industry's strategy is stupidly short sighted. Saving short term profits in the face of trying to stop the tide from coming in. If we had implemented real carbon policies 5 years ago, industry's GHG footprint would already be smaller and we could have said to anyone listen we're taking this seriously so don't punish us. Instead we look like hustlers and pushers.
But yes, inexorably the oil and gas industry must decline in importance over the next 40 years. We have four decades to transition. Most low carbon scenarios show that Canadian oil is marginal in a low carbon world. We have had the warnings, we risk putting all of our eggs into a basket that nobody wants.
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Tinordi, I honestly enjoy your diatribes on climate change, but what do you suggest that the average Canadian citizen do to stop it? The livelihood of many Albertans relies on an industry that is destroying the earth.
Scientists and activists can bang the "we needed to fix it decades ago" drum and I'm interested to know what technology they've come up with. The real kicker is that it's these very oil companies putting ideas into motion, such as carbon capture.
Carbon capture will be a component no doubt.
The one thing we can do is demand political action. Nobody is saying we need to just adopt technology x, y and z and voila we're done. We need to let the low carbon transition bubble up from the bottom with policy guidance from the top.
This is already happening too. There's a huge pile of tinder just waiting for a spark. 10 years ago the renewable energy industry, for example solar was a demonstration facility, now it's a 100 MW array worth millions. But we can't rely on this just happening with no incentive. Fossil fuels are amazing fuel sources therefore we need to scale up significantly assistance to alternative energy technologies and put a price of fossil fuel use that incorporates the economic damage they are and will wreak on our society.
It's just not feasible anymore to support politicians who do not take this seriously. We are all culpable which is unfortunate but it means that we need broad level policy to ensure we're all working to reduce carbon on a level playing field.
Finally on geoengineering, yes, it looks like we've screwed the pooch so badly on this issue that we'll need to start geo-engineering the Earth. But the best laid plans of mice and men...
We really have no idea what we're doing when it comes to this. This is by far a riskier strategy, and likely more expensive than simply transitioning away from coal, an 18th century fuel.
But geo-engineering is hardly a silver bullet and comes with considerable risk. It would simply not be prudent to carry on our merry way, dumping billions of tonnes of pollutants into the atmosphere annually and then compensation for that by flying planes around spraying aerosols into the atmospere to reflect the sunlight.
When those who say well we have incomplete knowledge of the Earth's systems, you should damn well be against geoengineering because the hubris of the endeavor is beyond match.
I think Global Warming/Climate Change is firmly a voting and economics issue and has been for some time. I wonder if that's been part of the reason that more hasn't been done to combat it. I often wonder if we'd be having a totally different conversation right now, akin to the Ozone Layer, if Al Gore wasn't the point man for the conversation almost a decade ago.
We'd be having the exact same conversation Al Gore or no Al Gore. The vested interests to continue with the status quo would not have keeled over no matter who was spearheading the initiative to do something. This is just another canard.
We love to blame the environmentalists, who doesn't love a good hippie punch? Yes the environmentalists were the problem because they politicized it, only ignore the billions in capital and interests directly tied to the coal and oil industries. Couple that with a moderately insane conservative constituency that sees addressing climate change as a core threat to their deeply held and flawed ideology and here we are.
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